Delete indices

DELETE /{index}

Deleting an index deletes its documents, shards, and metadata. It does not delete related Kibana components, such as data views, visualizations, or dashboards.

You cannot delete the current write index of a data stream. To delete the index, you must roll over the data stream so a new write index is created. You can then use the delete index API to delete the previous write index.

Required authorization

Authentication

Authorization: <value>

Elasticsearch APIs use key-based authentication. You must create an API key and use the encoded value in the request header. For example:

		curl -X GET "${ES_URL}/_cat/indices?v=true" \
  -H "Authorization: ApiKey ${API_KEY}"

For more information about where to find API keys for the Elasticsearch endpoint (${ES_URL}) for a project, go to Get started with Elasticsearch Serverless.

Request Console 1 / 8 languages

Console Kibana Dev Tools

DELETE /books

JavaScript Elasticsearch JavaScript Client

const response = await client.indices.delete({
  index: "books",
});

Python Elasticsearch Python Client

resp = client.indices.delete(
    index="books",
)

curl Shell

curl -X DELETE "$ELASTICSEARCH_URL/books" \
  -H "Authorization: ApiKey $ELASTIC_API_KEY"

Java Elasticsearch Java Client

client.indices().delete(d -> d
    .index("books")
);

C# Elasticsearch .NET Client

var response = await client.Indices.DeleteAsync(indices: new[] { "books" });

PHP Elasticsearch PHP Client

$resp = $client->indices()->delete([
    "index" => "books",
]);

Ruby Elasticsearch Ruby Client

response = client.indices.delete(
  index: "books"
)

Response

No example

Delete indices

Required authorization

Authentication

Path parameters

Query parameters

Response